Veterans maintained a remarkably low unemployment rate in a cooling economy Friday in the first monthly jobs report since President Donald Trump fired the Bureau of Labor Statistics commissioner over data showing that hiring had cratered.
The BLS report for August put the jobless rate for veterans at 3.0% even as the national unemployment rate ticked up from 4.2% to 4.3%, which was the highest rate recorded since October 2021.
The latest BLS data, which was collected through the mid-month of August, showed that the unemployment rate for all veterans was 3.0% in August while the subset unemployment rate for the post-9/11 generation of veterans was 3.1%.
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The comparable unemployment rates for July and June were consistent with the trend going back to the Biden administration of veterans consistently outperforming their civilian counterparts in a resilient jobs market. In July, the unemployment rate for all veterans was 3.0% while post-9/11 veterans had a jobless rate of 3.1%. In June, all veterans had an unemployment rate of 3.7% and post-9/11 veterans had a rate of 3.8%.
The positives for veterans were offset by other troubling BLS data showing that the economy added only 22,000 jobs in August, which was well below the expectations of most analysts that payrolls would expand by about 75,000. The BLS report also showed that manufacturing jobs, a main part of Trump’s economic agenda, fell for the fourth month in a row for a total of 78,000 lost jobs so far this year.
In addition, the BLS report stated that “a job gain in health care was partially offset by losses in federal government [jobs] and in mining, quarrying, and oil and gas extraction.”
Possibly the most troubling statistics came from the BLS reports going back several months. They showed that the U.S. added a meager average of about 35,000 jobs over the three months ending in July, which was a major downturn from the roughly 196,000 jobs added on average over the previous three-month period.
“The jobs market is going from frozen to cracking,” Heather Long, the new chief economist for Navy Federal Credit Union, said of the BLS report in a phone interview with Military.com. “More and more industries are doing layoffs. This is a white-collar and blue-collar jobs recession.”
Long warned of a jobs recession spreading to an economy-wide recession.
The bright spot was the low jobless rates for veterans, Long said. Law enforcement was still hiring veterans on the federal and state levels, Long said. “Those areas love to hire vets,” she said.
“It’s still a good news story for veterans despite all the turmoil” in the economy, said Kevin Rasch, the Warriors to Work regional director at the Wounded Warrior Project. “When you talk to employers, they see the benefit” of hiring and retaining veterans, said Rasch, a retired Navy commander.
In his response to the report, Trump, who last month fired BLS Commissioner Erika McEntarfer while claiming without evidence that the BLS numbers were “rigged,” did not directly comment on the BLS report and instead once again attacked Federal Reserve Board Chairman Jerome Powell for failing to cut interest rates to his liking.
“Could somebody please inform Jerome ‘Too Late’ Powell that he is hurting the housing industry, very badly? People can’t get a mortgage because of him,” Trump wrote on Truth Social.
“There is no Inflation,” Trump said, although the current inflation rate of about 2.7% was well above Powell’s target of 2%. Trump said he expected a “major rate cut” when the Federal Reserve holds its next policy meeting beginning Sept. 16.
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